


The Matryoshka World Gorillas Would Do Well to Marie Kondo Their Relative Universes

by Game_Changer



Category: Gintama
Genre: Gen, Navel-Gazing, Reality Bending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:07:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25413664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Game_Changer/pseuds/Game_Changer
Summary: Shinpachi does something unremarkable.
Relationships: Shimura Shinpachi & ????? ???????
Comments: 32
Kudos: 84





	The Matryoshka World Gorillas Would Do Well to Marie Kondo Their Relative Universes

Shinpachi does something unremarkable. Normally, true to its function, this would not be worth remarking upon.

Descriptions within stories do not usually do such things like point out the fact that someone is continuing to exist or go into detail about the spacing between hairs on the backs of their hands. These banal, trivial details do not often become parts of a narrative, because there are far more interesting points to cover. Stories do not tend to focus on the cardboard box when they could be describing the wonderfully greasy pizza inside it.

However, in this case, nothing is quite so remarkable or, in other words, _greasy_ as what Shinpachi unremarkably does right now.

He trips.

There is no curb or can or cat lying in wait for his foot. Simply put, all other possibilities aside – at the top of the list being continuing to walk unencumbered –, he manages to stumble on air. It is a hot enough day that the redness of his cheeks could be from what summer so generously gives, but we all know better. We are all here exclusively to bear witness to his shame.

The manifold eyes of the narrative stare with judgment upon Shinpachi.

Gintoki and Kagura, on the other hand, fail to notice anything out of order. What just happened is rather unremarkable, after all, so both Kagura’s cunning Yato instincts and Gintoki’s deus ex protagonist senses give nary a ping or a prick. Without a single backwards glance, they both continue their obnoxiously loud conversation about whether they should be getting Sadaharu the 50 or 75 kilo bag of dog food with Kagura advocating for the 75 because she has a coupon, and Gintoki advocating for the 50 because, even with the coupon, the 75 would mean less money now, even if it would amount to more money saved over time, and doesn’t she understand that he can invest that extra money today and have it become a million yen by the time they need more dog food, but by investing doesn’t he mean losing at pachinko, but she doesn’t know that, but yes she does because he always does that and it never works, which is why it will definitely work this time, he’s due for –

Shinpachi used to be a part of that conversation. Up until he trips on air, he makes his standard straight-man exclamations, walking side-by-side with his fellow Yorozuya crew. While his trip doesn’t cause him to fall over completely, he stumbles to a stop, sagging a bit under the weight of what his foot has just done. It is at least 75 kilos of pure embarrassment, and there are no coupons to help with the cost on this one.

In summary, Shinpachi trips, stumbles, and stops for a moment, soaking in his own shame.

While unremarkable, this is also unexpected, and here lies the crux of the matter. No one is prepared for this possibility – of Shinpachi taking this opportunity to trip on nothing and delay for no reason –, which is why, after glaring down at his feet for a good few seconds, Shinpachi looks up to see something he is not supposed to see.

Over to his left is an old, run-down looking shack. There is an Open sign hanging on a nail next to the door, which makes Shinpachi assume it is some kind of shop, but there is no outward indication as to what might be sold inside.

Stranger still, the whole building looks wavy and out of focus. Parts of it seem to ripple like water, while other spots divide into harsh, static pixels, and then recombine into piles of fuzz that remind him of those illusion books that have another image hidden there in plain sight if he can just figure out the right way to look at it. The wooden walls shimmer with colors Shinpachi couldn’t even imagine beginning to describe with any of the words he knows, while the individual straight planks distort themselves into ouroboros-esque curves bending into infinity.

He takes off his glasses and gives them a quick rub. When the glasses return to his eyes, the nameless shop looks no less strange than the rest of the world looks quite standard.

Gintoki and Kagura have already taken a turn onto a different street, straying completely out of sight. Shinpachi does know where they are going, so he could easily meet them there, leaving M. C. Escher crossed with Salvador Dali’s store to its own devices, but this does not feel like something he can just ignore.

When he reaches for the door handle, it almost seems to move away from his hands, sliding through space that hadn’t been there just before. It takes him a long moment of concentration, like he is trying to catch a darting fly with chopsticks, and he has to be far swifter and more dexterous than anyone who just tripped on thin air has a right to be before his hand makes contact.

Sliding the door open is a simple thing.

Inside, he finds a bookstore. The store clerk is half asleep at the counter, but gives him a vague nod as he enters. Even though the store is a lot bigger inside than its outside impression had given him, nothing seems to be visually wrong with the place. No books are flying off the shelves or bursting into errant rays of light. After spending a couple minutes looking for anything out of the ordinary and then an extra ten searching for any rare Otsuu-chan content and finding none of either, Shinpachi chalks his adventure up to a mild form of temporary insanity and leaves the bookstore.

Outside, nothing is as he left it.

There is a large, neon sign exclaiming a title of Offbeat Books! above his head, fastened to a colorful concrete building easily three times the size of the shack he had first entered. The dirt streets he had been walking on mere minutes before are now paved, with unfamiliar forms of cars inching through heavy traffic. The sidewalks are just as crowded as the streets, and the people on them are dressed exclusively in Western clothing – shorts and pants and t-shirts and cardigans and skirts and loafers. Most remarkably of all, for the first time in ages, as far as Shinpachi can see on a bustling city thoroughfare, there is not a single Amanto to be found.

A group of non-Amanto walk up to him, awestruck.

“You look just like him. It’s amazing,” someone says. “Can I take your picture?”

“Huh?”

“Your cosplay,” someone else affirms, “I could almost believe you really were Shinpachi. Can you pose like you’re annoyed and yelling at us about something?”

* * *

Shinpachi gets his own pair of shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt after two days of the same conversations and flash photography. Alongside that, he shoplifts the first three volumes of Gintama. No matter where he looks, or what streets he walks down throughout Edo – or Tokyo, as everyone now seems to call it – , manga volumes of a certain series are the only places where he manages to find even a single familiar face.

It is one thing to occasionally have the vague, general notion that he is in a story authored by a modestly messy gorilla in a room somewhere, but it is really something else to read the story while outside of it. He is starting to realize that what he had tripped on earlier must have actually been the crumbling remains of a fourth wall.

Turning to the first page of the first chapter, Shinpachi looks at himself as a child watching his father die. With a hand covered in visible pores, light scars, wrinkles, subtle veins, and a soft dusting of hair separated into clumsy, careless patches that puberty has yet to combine, he traces his simple, two-dimensional figure as he is drawn at the start of the story.

His hands then move to the figure of his sister. They pause on her face and stay there for a long time.

* * *

Three weeks later, he is in line at Lotteria when he spots her behind the counter in uniform, brown hair tucked into a neat bun beneath her bright red visor. She smiles brightly as she takes the order of a customer in front of Shinpachi, not noticing him just yet. Suddenly, she is blinking rapidly in his direction, fingers frozen midair above the register.

“Shimura-san?” she asks.

“Okita-san,” he replies.

* * *

According to Okita Mitsuba, she is in her fourteenth year* in this reality. Sazae-san’s rules apparently do not apply here, because she does look to have changed with the times. The laugh lines around her lips and eyes are deeper, and she has gained a healthy amount of weight – those signs of infirmity and chronic illness gone from her frame. Shinpachi has yet to hear her cough once.

They sit across from each other in Okita’s dimly lit, sparsely decorated studio apartment. There is a TV and Blu-ray player resting on the floor in front of a sagging couch. Next to them are messy piles of DVDs and manga volumes of Gintama, alongside some of the latest issues of Shounen Jump. Once again, familiarly drawn faces stare up at him.

“Is this the afterlife?” he ventures.

“I’ve wondered the same thing myself,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I did die before.”

Shinpachi feels strange about nodding along to that, but he does so gently.

“It was an out-of-body experience to watch my last episode on the show,” she adds, gesturing vaguely toward the TV. “Seeing it all happen with that heart-wrenching musical score made me feel more emotional than when I experienced everything firsthand. The composer really tried their best.”

The only thing he can think of to say is, “I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, I didn’t mean it that way,” she waves a hand and laughs. “I’ve had years to come to terms with it, really. I’m just trying to tell you what I know, and what I know is that what we did in our stories is what people see here – with some cinematic embellishments.”

It hits Shinpachi that this woman has been watching him, reading about him for all this time. He feels the need to make vague excuses for his behavior.

Seemingly without judgment, Okita smiles, gets up, and rummages around in her refrigerator. In moments, she begins chopping up some monstrous peppers on her cutting board, and the spiced heat of death incarnate hits him like a venomous cloud of wasps. Doubled over in physical pain, the only coherent thought he can manage circles precariously around his brain: Can an afterlife truly be this real and vivid?

“You must be hungry. I’ll make us something to eat.”

“No, no, thank you,” he gasps.

“Well, more for me then,” she says cheerfully.

Despite not eating any of it, he still gets the runs. It takes his digestive system a week just to get used to the general smells of her apartment.

* * *

The manga chapter detailing his disappearance comes out a month later. Okita brings the newest copy of Shounen Jump home with her from work and hands it to Shinpachi.

He watches Gintoki, Kagura, and himself walk down the street to get dog food. They walk and argue, argue and walk. Suddenly, in the corner of one panel, Shinpachi trips. In the next panel, he stumbles. In the next, he is not there, because Gintoki and Kagura move on while he stays put, and the manga moves on with them.

“So you really did just trip?” Okita asks, reading over his shoulder. “That’s it?”

“You finally believe me?” he replies, having told her the story enough times to have memorized the way her smile will thin and her eyes will focus slightly to the right whenever she’s trying to politely contain her skepticism.

“I suppose so,” she manages, and this time instead of containing disbelief, she’s trying to put a lid on her laughter.

“It isn’t funny,” he exclaims to Okita’s wheezing and insincere apologies.

Shinpachi looks back at the manga. There he is, and then he trips, and then he’s gone.

“Okay, maybe it might be a little funny if it weren’t about me vanishing from my known universe,” he amends bitterly.

Grumbling and roughly flipping the pages, he skims through the words and the plot, looking for some mention of himself. Won’t anybody notice that he’s just suddenly vanished?!

Finally, at the end of the chapter, after their unsuccessful quest for dog food leads them to instead accidentally solve a territorial dispute between two rival street gangs by teaching a rebellious parrot how to say the word Honeybee, Kagura and Gintoki return to the Yorozuya HQ. It is at this point that Kagura pauses and furrows her brow.

“Hey, where did Shinpachi go?” she asks.

Gintoki hums as he sits in his chair at his desk.

“I thought he was with you,” he says.

“If he was with me, he would be with you too, because I was with you,” she says. “We spent the day together.”

Kagura stares at Gintoki’s back. Gintoki’s face is not shown.

“He probably just wandered off. He’ll show up later,” the speech bubble coming from the back of Gintoki’s head says. “And he’d better have some dog food with him. He was the one who was supposed to get that.”

Kagura is drawn frowning, black lines and empty space, looking toward the door as the chapter ends.

A warm, solid, three-dimensional hand rests on Shinpachi’s head. Fingers brush through his hair like they must have done to some other little brother in another story years and years ago.

“We have to get you back home,” she says.

It isn’t like they weren’t trying already. Okita and Shinpachi kept going in and out of the door to the bookstore where he had first arrived in this reality. They hopped, crawled, and ran through the entryway in enough different ways and enough times that they are officially banned from the shop. Their pictures are now in the windows with Okita’s showing her mid-laugh, utterly unrepentant, while Shinpachi’s clearly broadcasts the decency in his character that has the capacity to feel shame.

“They’ll be okay,” he says, because they will be. Gintoki and Kagura will be fine.

They have to be. They have to be okay without him, because he tripped.

Then, “Was I drawn tripping because I tripped, or did I trip because I was drawn tripping?”

Okita pauses. She takes her hand off his head.

“Did I really do anything of my own free will,” Shinpachi continues, “or was I just a part of someone else’s story?”

“Well,” she says with calm consideration, “now that I am outside of the story, I do want to have done things differently. I wish I had never gotten engaged and come to Edo. I wish I had done better by Sou-chan and...” she trails off into silence, takes a breath, and puts a fist up to her mouth, holding it there.

A firm smile comes and she continues, “I say this knowing what I know, but not because any fundamental part of me has changed after leaving the story. I gained hindsight, not a newfound freedom of self. Although, having the strength to keep a day job has been rather fulfilling,” she added brightly.

It is a good point. Shinpachi can’t say he feels like much of a different person now than when he was serialized either. There is a consistency to his character, but it is still not enough to make him feel at peace.

“So there’s a gorilla that’s creating the world of Gintama, right?” he says and Okita nods. “So what if there’s another gorilla that’s creating the world that includes the gorilla that’s creating the world of Gintama – in other words, where we are right now? What if there are a bunch of World Gorillas creating layers upon layers of realities, and we just went up one layer to the next one?” Shinpachi asks, and the pages of Gintama crinkle and bend in his curled hands.

He gives himself a paper-cut.

* * *

A few more months pass until his sister shows up. She kicks down the door to Okita’s studio apartment right in the middle of their session of binge-watching the Yagyuu Arc. Shinpachi had not realized how forcefully the Yagyuu clan had treated his sister during that time, and the more he watches, the more he feels an irritation that keeps boiling and bubbling over with nowhere to go. He is starting to more deeply understand Okita’s point about hindsight and perspective.

The very same sister who was mistreated in a past story stands before him now, outside of the television screen, looking equally if not more irked than he has ever seen her, smiling sharply enough to cut cleanly through the fabric of space and time.

“Shin-chan, did you really expect me to not look for you if you ran away? No matter how much it gets sidelined and pushed aside by the likes of brutish, permy samurai, I won’t let you completely abandon our family dojo side-plot. You do not get to spin off. Not without me.”

As she rants, breathing a fire so different from Okita’s spices, Shinpachi jumps to his feet. He runs over to hug her tight, feeling the material of her kimono slide beneath the pads of his fingers. She covers width, length, and height with legitimate fullness, and he wraps around her.

“Shin-chan,” she says again, softer this time.

“I missed you so much,” he says, and that’s when she hugs him back.

* * *

“So you really did just trip?” his sister asks, looking amazed and disappointed all at once as she downs a serving of Okita’s curry like it’s a slice of plain wonder bread. “That’s it?”

“Why does everyone say it like that?”

Okita and his sister exchange a knowing look.

“It’s not important how I got here,” Shinpachi exclaims loudly in the hopes he can change the course of the conversation through sheer force of will. “Let’s focus on how _you_ got here!”

“I ripped a hole from my universe into this one,” his sister replies, matter-of-fact.

“Oh, yes,” Okita speaks up. “Like you did during the Popularity Poll Arc.”

Shinpachi shivers at the memory as his sister nods approvingly.

“That gorilla got what was coming to him,” she says serenely. “I came here to do it again – to give him a piece of my mind for making my Shin-chan disappear, and that is when he told me where you were.”

Sorachi-sensei knows where he is? He knows about Shinpachi even when Shinpachi’s not in the pages of Gintama? What does this mean? Shinpachi feels like banging his head against a wall.

“Well, I am glad you found us,” Okita says, and her smile is warm. “Now you can bring your little brother home.”

“Of course,” his sister says, “but, before we go, I’m just curious… what is it that you were watching when I first came in? I could almost swear that I saw myself.”

* * *

A week later, Yagyuu Kyuubei slices through the recently repaired door to Okita’s studio apartment.

“Tae-chan,” Kyuubei says, “you weren’t at your dojo, so I started searching for you, and then I realized the only possible reason for your disappearance is that you must have broken through our universe into another reality, so I built a machine to send myself here as well.”

“Kyuu-chan,” his sister beckons. “We just started the Yoshiwara Arc. Come join us.”

* * *

Two days later, Toujou Ayumu headbutts down the recently repaired door to Okita’s studio apartment.

“Waka,” he exclaims. “I built a copy of the machine you built to break through our universe so I could also break through our old universe into this new one so that we can start a new life together here. I ever brought all of your goth –”

Climbing over Toujou’s corpse, Kondo Isao opens his mouth to speak, but Shinpachi’s sister’s fist gets there before he can.

* * *

A half hour later, Katsura Kotarou walks through the open doorway, stepping gingerly over a stray piece of broken wood to put one foot directly atop Kondo’s head and the other on Toujou’s. He stands tall. Everyone turns to look at him.

“I just wanted to let you all know that I have been on standby in this reality for the whole time.”

He then dismounts, sits formally in the corner, and starts pulling Gintama volumes out of their piles, reading only the manga chapters where he makes an appearance.

* * *

Six hours later, Okita glances around the room looking thoughtful.

“I suppose I need to get a bigger apartment,” she says.

* * *

The bigger apartment ends up being four three bedroom apartments on the other side of town – only affordable due to the combined salaries of the ten other Gintama migrants alongside Shinpachi who, by that time, have ended up knocking down Okita’s door on their way into her life and onto her Gintama-viewing couch. While many follow the path already trodden and get a food service job with Okita at Lotteria or a close equivalent, one shoe does not fit all.

Sakamoto finds employment as a carnival game manager (definitely a carnival game manager, they do actually make that much, there’s really nothing shady going on, he promises!), Ketsuno Ana predictably gets a job as a weather reporter, while Hasegawa somehow manages to become the Prime Minister in a few short weeks.

* * *

Reading the newest chapters of Gintama becomes quite awkward quite quickly. The panels lose more and more recurring and side-characters page-by-page, until there is hardly anyone left with which to drum up plot, comedy, and intrigue. Whatever directional pathway from the Gintama universe into this one that Shinpachi has opened up by tripping seems to be getting easier to trip into with each character that makes the journey.

In the present chapter, Gintoki and Kagura walk into Otose’s Empty Snackhouse. Kagura hops behind the counter and rummages in their pantry.

“I’m going to cook them something, so they’ll have a warm meal waiting for them when they get back from wherever they went,” she says. “And if they don’t come back in time, I’ll just eat it, so it won’t go to waste. Aren’t I thoughtful?”

Gintoki doesn’t respond in his panel. Instead, he uses the space to pour himself a drink from granny’s stock. On the following page, he drinks. As he does so, the reader is only treated to a view of the back of his head. Shinpachi can’t remember the last time he was drawn facing forward. Gintoki hasn’t looked his way in quite some time.

He slams the volume shut with a flinch and goes to find his sister.

She is in the middle of a game of poker with Okita, Kyuubei, Otose, Catherine, Hinowa, and Tsukuyo. The smokers in the room have turned the air into an impenetrable fog, thick enough to conceal any cheaters performing their sleights of hand, which has Shinpachi wondering if the smoking is less for smoking’s sake and more to assist this particular crowd as they aspire to do the wrong thing in order to get their way.

When it comes to getting his way, he inevitably struggles. He has been bringing up the possibility of returning home to his sister for weeks, and she always finds ways to change the subject or avoid it entirely. There are not many people who can get her to do anything she doesn’t want to do, but Shinpachi has to believe he can make the list this time.

He stumbles through the smoke toward her shape.

“We have to go home now,” he says.

“In a minute,” she replies as her outline surreptitiously accepts a card-shaped outline underneath the outline of the table from the fingers of a Kyuubei-shaped outline, and then spreads an outline of cards in front of the group. “My flush is about to win me some good cash.”

“Shinpachi-kun is giving you a reasonable out,” Hinowa’s outline interjects as she places another outline of cards on the table. “After losing to my four-of-a-kind, maybe you should take it.”

“Having you here is bad luck,” the outline of his sister snaps, and she drags him out into the hall.

As the door closes, he sees what he thinks is the shape of Okita place her hand down to strangled screams and gasps of astonishment.

The door shuts completely and he turns around. Here is the full form of his sister standing before him, outline now colored in, shaded, and given light. Her arms are folded tightly, with a challenging spark in the gradated brown of her eyes that speaks of dire, unnameable threats in store should he continue his crusade.

“We need to go back,” he says, refusing to let himself be dissuaded. “You know that we need to go back.”

She smiles that crisp, clean smile that Shinpachi has come to know is actually pretty heavy-duty irritation.

“I don’t see why,” she says. “It’s not much different being here or there, is there? It might even be easier to develop our dojo here. With enough money and the Prime Minister in our pockets, no one would deny us the opportunity.”

Sure, there isn’t that sword ban or the Amanto to contend with, and Hasegawa has made it pretty clear he would be criminally easy to bribe if Shinpachi’s sister’s violence was involved…

“But it’s not the family dojo.”

This reality wasn’t what their father had left them. Nowhere in this world would he ever be able to find the grounds where he had been raised except when it is drawn and printed on paper.

“In carrying on our family legacy,” he continues, “we can’t just leave the physical part of it behind. That’s not the way it works!”

In short order, his sister’s cool anger crumples into something just short of sadness.

“In a world empty of people, who would be our pupils?”

“We can go back. All of us. Everyone. We can go back!” he insists.

“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” she says roughly. “The night after I got here, I tried to rip our way back home, but I couldn’t. No matter how furiously I clawed at this universe, it wouldn’t open a way back to ours.”

“What?”

“It was different when I ripped my way here last time during the Popularity Poll,” she adds. “Since my visit was so short, I think I left the door open, in a way. But this time I’ve been in this universe long enough that the door I opened closed behind me.”

He swallows a monstrous lump in his throat.

Suddenly, he understands. He understands why not only his sister, but also everyone else who has strong ties to the plots and pieces of Gintama are all sticking around in this universe. No one goes back because, just like Shinpachi, they cannot find a way to return.

Even with how trapped some of them must feel, they never mention it in front of him. Not one soul. Even when they all must know that this is his fault. He is the one that trips first, after all.

“What are we supposed to do?”

She smiles that clear, calm smile that Shinpachi has come to know as her way of looking at something important.

“No matter what happens, no matter what doors close behind me, no matter the precious places I lose, I’m thankful I’m here,” she says. “I’m happy that when you ask questions, you can naturally use the word ‘we’ instead of ‘I.’”

Shinpachi holds her hand and tries not to cry.

After a long silence, the gentle handhold turns into a mercilessly bone-breaking squeeze and his sister adds, “Although, I would be even happier if you stopped interrupting my poker games.”

Shinpachi still tries not to cry, but for a very different reason.

* * *

The next day, Shinpachi visits Sorachi.

The gorilla looks at him as he hangs from a vine attached to the ceiling.

On the desk below him, there is a drawing of Gintoki’s back on a sheet of paper next to a lone banana.

Sorachi picks up the banana with his foot and begins to peel.

Sorachi eats the banana.

Midway through, Sorachi offers a bite to Shinpachi.

Shinpachi politely refuses.

Sorachi nods and finishes the banana.

Shinpachi looks at Sorachi.

Sorachi looks at Shinpachi.

“Am I real?” Shinpachi asks.

Sorachi looks at Shinpachi.

“How do we get home?” Shinpachi asks.

Sorachi looks at Shinpachi.

“Do you not want me in your story anymore?” Shinpachi asks. “Did I do something wrong?”

Sorachi slides down the vine, takes hold of a pen, and puts it to paper.

Sorachi gives the paper to Shinpachi.

It is a drawing of Shinpachi the way Shinpachi has always been drawn in the pages of Gintama, but he is doing something he never did in Gintama.

Within the confines of black ink and lines, Shinpachi is refusing the offer of a banana from Sorachi.

* * *

Okita lights up when she sees him. It is her tired-but-delighted face. Like his sister, he is getting to the know the meaning of her different smiles.

“I keep telling you that you don’t have to walk me home from work,” she says, falling into step with him. “I’ve done it alone for years.”

“You never should have had to,” he insists.

She opens her mouth and gasps in mock scandal.

“I don’t judge you for wearing cargo shorts, and I would appreciate the same courtesy given to me and my commute.”

“You are definitely judging my cargo shorts. The way you said that make it seems like you’re really judging me for that!”

Shinpachi looks down at his shorts – his comfortable shorts with enough pockets for all of his belongings. It’s a reasonable substitute for his normal clothes, which aren’t so normal in this world!

“So how was your day?” Okita asks, her smile relaxed and easy.

Sighing, Shinpachi lets himself be dragged along with this change of topic. It is true that he has something he wants to talk to her about, and these walks back home are one of the few in-between moments they get to spend alone these days, with a busy restaurant job on one end and a veritable ensemble of nosy Gintama characters on the other.

“I went to visit Sorachi-sensei,” he says.

Her face doesn’t change. She doesn’t seem surprised at all as she says, “Oh?”

Out of one of the many useful pockets in his shorts, he pulls out Sorachi’s drawing.

“He offered me a banana and, when I said no, he drew it. He drew me.”

She takes the paper, so absorbed in the contents that Shinpachi has to navigate her down curbs and around fire hydrants as they walk.

“Ah,” she exclaims, “there’s Sakata-san too.”

Shinpachi looks to where she points, and he sees it. Beneath the figure of Sorachi holding out his banana, there is a paper drawn on his desk. On the paper is a drawing of Gintoki, his back facing all of them.

“You’re right,” he says. “And that paper on his desk was really there in his room when I went. He drew the entire scene.”

Okita hands him back the paper, looking thoughtful.

“If Sorachi-sensei draws the stories and he drew you, doesn’t that mean you’re still in the story?”

Shinpachi is not sure what to do with that thought. It can’t be right.

“He publishes his stories and we read them in this place, in this reality. He won’t publish this,” he says, pocketing the paper.

“Weren’t there parts of your lives from different arcs that didn’t make it into the manga?” she counters.

Shinpachi remembers quiet mornings cleaning the dojo grounds. He remembers sitting on the Yorozuya couches with Kagura saying nothing at all, while Gintoki snores the morning away in the adjacent room. He remembers a series of really vivid dreams he had about a creature with Otsuu-chan’s head and Pandemonium-san’s body...

“Maybe so,” he says vaguely.

“In the same way, maybe this is your in-between time,” Okita attempts. “You started the story with Sakata and Kagura going to get dog food at Part A, you’ll end that story at Part B, but for the moment you’re here at… Part A and a half?”

Wouldn’t it be easier to use numbers instead of letters if you are going to halve them, is what Shinpachi does not say.

“You just need to find your way to Part B – to the end of this story,” she concludes.

“That is what I’ve been trying to do,” he replies tiredly. “We’re wanted criminals at Offbeat Books! now.”

Okita shakes her head and grabs his wrist, pulling them both away from the path toward home.

“That’s going backwards,” she says. “That’s going back to Part A, where you came from. You need to get to Part B.”

Shinpachi wants to ask her where she is going, but the words don’t come. Instead he watches her back as she pulls him along, her short, loose bun bobbing energetically with her determined steps. She looks so different in this place than in her final days within Gintama. Here, she looks so alive – much more than a bulleted list of plot points, personality traits, and framed artistic snapshots of moments someone deemed important.

He thinks of Plato’s allegory of the cave.

If he ever gets back to his reality, the first thing he will do is tell everyone about her. He wants to let them know about Okita, and how she is here. He knows there are so many people that would want to hear this story, even if they would never admit it.

“I think this is it,” she says, looking forward.

Shinpachi follows her gaze to the front of a pet food store, and he immediately understands.

“You really think it could be that simple? I just have to go buy dog food?” he asks.

“You won’t know unless you try,” she says cheerfully, and gives his back a gentle push.

Shinpachi hesitates.

“What if,” he says, “what if it works?”

“Then everyone goes back home.”

Shinpachi looks at Okita, and he knows she is a bit sad even if she would never say it.

“I do want to go home,” he tries, “but home isn’t just in Gintama anymore. I have a home here too.”

Okita gets a little watery at that.

“You’re sweet. Thank you,” she says.

Shinpachi feels his cheeks warm and he looks down. The two of them stand together for an awkward, heavy moment.

“Did I ever tell you that I went to look for my parents?” she asks suddenly.

“Huh?”

“In this place,” she continues, “when I knew this was a step out of Gintama, I wondered if I could find my parents here.”

Shinpachi would be lying if he said he hasn’t thought about doing the same thing with his own parents, but it just feels too dangerous, finding more and more bonds to hang onto in this place, while Gintoki, Kagura, and the Yorozuya move farther and farther away; he never dared to let himself try. He wonders if his sister did.

“I searched for years, but I couldn’t find them,” she says. “Maybe I didn’t search in the right places, but I know them. I know their names, how they’d want to live, I know them,” she repeats. “If I couldn’t find them, I think that means they’re not here.”

“But then…”

“Maybe it’s like you said. There’s a gorilla writing the reality of Gintama in our reality, and then there could be a gorilla creating the gorilla writing Gintama in a whole other reality. I like to think that’s where my parents are. Or maybe they’re with the gorilla making the gorilla creating the gorilla writing Gintama,” she says. “And one day, when I get tired of this reality or this reality gets tired of me, I might move up to the next gorilla. And then the next one. And the next. Eventually, I might catch up to my parents or maybe I never will.”

Shinpachi wonders if it’s true. He wonders a lot of things, but only one question comes out of his mouth:

“How long do you think you’ll stay here?”

Okita sniffles and smiles. Stepping forward, she hugs him.

“I like what I’m doing and where I am. I don’t imagine I’ll be leaving anytime soon,” she says into his shoulder. “And right now, I’ll be waiting right here. You go on inside and get your dog food, and I’ll be waiting right here to meet you when come out.”

She lets him go, and dusts off his shirt then straightens it.

“Okay?” she says.

Not trusting himself to speak, he nods.

Shinpachi goes inside and buys their largest bag of dog food. Hefting it onto his right shoulder, he leaves the store. In front of him, he sees what he thinks is the fuzzy silhouette of something familiar, but the static fades before he can pin it down, and his mind quickly wanders away from what it means. He walks across the street. He keeps walking for a very long while until he reaches a set of steps. There, he climbs.

Sliding open the door is a simple thing.

“I’m back,” he says.

Kagura walks up, exuding disappointment as she surveys him.

“You dare show your face with only a 50 kilo bag? What’s the point of having you around if you don’t get the 75?”

“Hey!” Shinpachi yelps. “Can’t you even show the bare minimum of gratitude?”

“Not when you can’t put in the bare minimum of effort,” she says as she swipes the bag.

Without any trouble, she flings the bag around in a circle before catapulting it in the direction of Sadaharu, who swallows it whole, wrapping and all.

“See? We already need more.”

“You know he gets a stomachache when you do that,” Shinpachi exclaims. “Why do you keep doing that?”

“He likes the challenge,” Kagura asserts, patting Sadaharu’s already-swelling stomach proudly like it’s her prize fighter.

Heading over to the couch with a sigh, Shinpachi sinks down. He feels tired and old and wants to rest, which isn’t to say he feels bad, necessarily. He feels like a character at the end of a story, who has had enough grand adventures to keep him sleeping deeply for a long while ever after.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a chair swivel. Gintoki turns toward him.

He is eating a banana.

“Want some?” he asks.

“Sure, okay,” Shinpachi says.

Gintoki tosses it over and Shinpachi catches it neatly. Peeled three-quarters of the way down and only half eaten, it has a good number of bites left. The lines of his hand are drawn holding the banana.

He takes a bite and it is full of flavor.

“This is really good. Where’d you get it?” Shinpachi asks.

“As thanks for a job,” Gintoki replies.

He wants to ask ‘What job?’, but Gintoki is standing up. He rests a hand on Shinpachi’s head, gently rustling his hair in a way that feels half-familiar for a moment as he walks by on his way toward the bathroom.

The world feels bright and noisy and warm and big, full to bursting with the people he loves, as Shinpachi settles in and eats his banana.

It truly is a very good banana.

**Author's Note:**

> *Gintama’s 16th Tankobon, covering Mitsuba’s death, was released in 2006.


End file.
